NDB Fishermen's Relief Trust Fund launched

National Development Bank (NDB) Fishermen's Relief Trust Fund organised a ceremony in Weligama last week to mark the handing over of boats, engines and fishing gear to Tsunami affected fishermen.

Five new fishing boats, two 30 HP engines and fishing gear costing over Rs. 2.1 million were donated. The bank would also assist 33 families to get back to their livelihoods. Statistics reveal that over 12,500 small boats and canoes were used in Sri Lanka prior to the Tsunami and 9,500 of them have been completely damaged or in a state of repair.

With this in view the NDB Fishermen's Relief Trust Fund was set up with a seed capital of Rs. 10 million. The intention was to raise Rs. 100 million from local and foreign donors to accomplish the task.

This amount is estimated to be 10% of the total cost required to replace or repair the various types of boats that were damaged excluding the multi-day boats. NDB is well on course to reach the target with many generous donors pledging more than Rs. 60 million already.

NDB has been able to help 213 families at a cost of Rs. 10.44 million. These 213 families were chosen from Galle, Matara, Colombo, Gampaha, Batticaloa and Trincomalee Districts. A further sum of Rs. 8.89 million has been committed from the fund for relief, which will help another 100 families to stand on their own feet.

Due to the enormity of the damage and the sudden escalation in the demand for boats the boat builders in the country are finding it hard to manage the demand. This has slowed down the relief efforts of NDB.

To overcome the constraint NDB embarked on a parallel project to assist boat builders to increase their production capacity by setting up boat yards in the Eastern province as there is a dearth of boat builders in those areas.

With NDB assistance a boat yard was set up in Trincomalee in March and it has already made 25 canoes. With the profits the boat yard has now expanded and plans to make 19.5' day boats and lagoon canoes.

Negotiations are also under way with a boat yard in Matara and an entrepreneur in Ampara to set up a new yard to manufacture boats in Ampara. Over 844 fishermen have applied for assistance from the NDB Fishermen's Relief Trust Fund so far. Out of the applications received 60% are from the North and Eastern provinces and the rest from the Southern and Western Provinces.